Roachdale council puts condemned property out to bid

ROACHDALE -- In an effort to tidy up the town, the Roachdale Town Council has been trying to get a number of properties to either be cleaned up or torn down.

One of those properties in question belongs to Shelia Williams.

At Tuesday night's board meeting Council Member Zach Bowers made a motion for the town to move forward on getting bids for clearing off the Williams property.

Williams has been given multiple opportunities by the town to have the property cleaned up. Bowers brought the motion to the council at the June meeting, but it failed to pass the first time. The council passed the motion at Tuesday's meeting and will be drawing up documents to proceed further.

The Wiggins property has had notable progress in its clean-up, but still needs to have debris removed. The council will give Dan Asher, who is taking care of the clean-up, seven days to tend to the property after he receives notification from the town. If the property is not cleaned up after those seven days, the town will put the clean-up work out to bid.

The Bryant property was also discussed last month as the council gave Jim Bryant, the owner of the property, notice to have the property cleared. Tuesday night council members noted that the property looked worse than it did last month.

"It looks like a tornado hit it," Council President Jack Jones commented.

Bryant will receive notice that the trailer structure must be cleared from the property by Aug. 1.

The council is also looking into who owns an abandoned home located across from the Casey's in Roachdale. The council is trying to find the owners to notify them of their failure to adhere to the weed ordinance.

The town also received notice that during the replacement of gas lines in Roachdale a pipe was missed. The pipe leads to the high school.

Greg Poole told the council that the pipe wasn't missed, but that it had been different from the pipe they had been using and couldn't be changed. Since it was not replaced it will cost the town $10,000 to fix it.

Town Marshal Mike Mahoy went to the council with the proposition of getting a K-9 dog for Roachdale. Mahoy is in the process of writing grants so that the cost of getting the dog would be nothing to the town.

Members of the town council were slightly hesitant. Roachdale has had a K-9 dog in the past but it reportedly was not well taken care of. Mahoy assured the council that what had happened in that case would not happen with him taking the lead.

Mahoy's plan is to be able to acquire the "Cadillac Model" of K-9 dogs. The dog would be trained for not only drug search, but also can be used as a bite dog when chasing suspects.

In other business:

-- Tammy Folck updated the council on how park clean-up was coming and asked the board if fencing from the back of the park area could be taken down and repurposed or scrapped. The council gave its approval.

-- Poole informed the council that the county might take the millings from the repaving project. If the county does not take them, then Steve Jones would be willing to take them.

-- Miller Pipeline reportedly will be in Roachdale next week fixing several different areas from where construction took place.

-- The town is looking for new signs at the entrances to Roachdale. The town received a bid from CSI Signs for signs with words on both back and front and also for installation of the signs. The board decided that only wording on one side of the sign was necessary and that installation could be done by town employees. A new bid will be sought with amended items.

-- Mitchum Excavating will be repairing curb damage to the sidewalk in front of the library that occurred during snow removal this past winter.

The next Roachdale Town Council meeting will take place Aug. 13 at 6 p.m.